When you Shouldn’t be Using Linux

Many articles already explain why you should use Linux and describes its advantages. However, for a potential new user, it’s also important to know the other side: what are the disadvantages of Linux? This short article by Carl Simard tries to present this other side so that new users can evaluate much better if Linux is for them to try or if they should forget about it.

About The Author

107 Comments

I’m suprised this made it onto OSNews. Sure, there are valid reasons for not running Linux, it’s still a bit too much of a techie OS. But if the desire is there to rid your machine of MS software…

2003-05-28 10:49 pm

>I’m suprised this made it onto OSNews.

Why? We run all sorts of articles on why you SHOULD be running Linux, why the opposite opinion bothers you? OSNews is not a Linux news fan site. It is an OS site in general.

2003-05-28 10:52 pm

Well yes Linux is different and you will have to learn command line stuff and deal with alternative software choices. Also having to learn over how to do things. But I say this what is the difference whenever you try anything new. I realize that most pc games are not made for Linux. But it is only a matter of time they will be ported more so over. There are also free games and emulators that you can use to play if you wish. From my experiences whenever i have emailed screenshots or shown LInux to someone they are impressed and like the way it looks (KDE). Yes you have to learn new things but hey I will learn whatever it takes to have a freedom and choice again and have my computer feel like mine again.

2003-05-28 10:55 pm

I am impressed by this article and its accuracy. It very nicely puts the reasons you wouldn’t want to use linux in perspective, I’ll probably show this to anyone that I recommend linux to, especially since I tend to downplay the transition difficulties unintentionally because i’m so used to linux by now.

2003-05-28 10:58 pm

While the article itself is a factual look at the few downsides to running a linux-based OS, the choice of title is unfortunate, as it’s 100 percent, money-back guaranteed to bring out the trolls. Personally, I agree with the artice; Linux OS’s are NOT for everyone. If you don’t like using your brain, or actually having to know how your computer works, then you should probably stick with Windows XP. It’s not a bad OS, if you like that sort of thing. Or, if you’re looking for a “My First *NIX Workstation”-type of system, but still want good commercial apps, buy a Macintosh. They’re good, high-quality machines, if a little overpriced and underpowered.

2003-05-28 10:58 pm

and uses Linux for everything else… I would say that this is a fair article. The author might have mentioned that there are free alternatives for a lot of Windows apps, but that in some cases no alternatives exist…

2003-05-28 11:19 pm

The hardware requirements. I guess it depends on the apps you want to run and the window manager you use. When I first started using linux it was on a 486/66. I used X windows with FVWM and I never had a problem!

2003-05-28 11:19 pm

>>

Yes, XP and 2k3 are very good OSes, the best user OSes today (except in security).

>>

XP is a very good desktop, but the “best OS” really depends on the job you want to do. If you are one of the million machines running a web server, DNS, Mail, Oracle, Nuclear power, or Visa-type transactions, Windows is NOT the best OS for you. And that’s just one example.

2003-05-28 11:20 pm

I’ve always wanted to know why Linux on the desktop doesn’t try to compete for the speed crown. It takes KDE 2.5 minutes to load on a K6-2 350MHz with 192 MB / RAM. It doesn’t use any swap (barely), on a clean boot. A Pentium-II 266MHz? Almost a minute, with 160 MB / RAM. My Pentium 90MHz laptop? I don’t try to load X. It’s not a compatibility thing, it’s a speed thing. I know X isn’t the slowdown source, and KDE 3.x is a great improvement on speed, but how come Windows can be so much faster? Software architecture aside, I think X+(name your DE / WM) should probably compare a little better.

But what do I know…

2003-05-28 11:21 pm

for a newbie, but a bit short of things like the Wine option for the slightly more advanced user. I’ve been using Linux pretty much exclusively for 18 months and recommend it where appropriate to friends and clients. The ‘rule of thumb’ is:

Need office, web, email and a few simple games to waste time on? Use Linux – it’s cheaper and perfectly suitable.

Anything else? Give it a go if you want but don’t commit until you’re sure.

The good news is that a year ago this kind of article would have been about how Linux is lacking in key areas like printing, package management, user-friendly system configuration and all the other stuff. Now we just get down to whether you use speciality apps or are a hardcore gamer.

Damned good progress if you ask me!

Go Munich – show us the way :o)

2003-05-28 11:23 pm

Here’s two observation of mine.

1) When a news is about two OS other than Linux (like recently the one between Windows and Mac), the discussion will always slide toward Linux soon or later.

2) When a news critizism Linux, suddenly the site owners and moderator have a questionnable behavior, sometime even insulting words are used.

And *you* want *me* to embrace this type of *freedom* ?

No thanks.

2003-05-28 11:24 pm

>Yes, XP and 2k3 are very good OSes, the best user OSes today (except in security).

Did you lose the word “user” somewhere in the middle maybe??? I am talking about desktop OSes.

As for servers, Win2k3 IS a good server OS.

2003-05-28 11:25 pm

If you’re a casual gamer like me and like to do everything else in Linux you will probably see yourself booting less and less into Windows. It’s just too damn cumbersome to reboot just to be able to play some game.

I’m lucky, because most games I like have a Linux version or is playable under Wine.

2003-05-28 11:27 pm

Why you all have to attack os news and the moderators so much? If you don’t like it here – go some where else. You’re really not needed here, its not as if attacking this place is doing you or any of us a favor now is it? Unless of course your a slashdot reject that couldn’t hack it with the “big dog” zealous so your practing here. But still, I bet most os news readers could stand to go a few threads without seeing some close-minded dolt spew verbage about how os news sucks because it doesn’t tout their favorite OS as the best. Face it, the moderators writing the articles have a lot more exposure to the os scene in terms of whats out there and the relative strengths and weaknesses of each one.

2003-05-28 11:27 pm

>but how come Windows can be so much faster?

You are loading kde3 and compare it with win98.

Have you ever tried running XP on your 90mhz laptop

or 350mhz workstation? Try redhat 6.2 with kde1 is loads

very fast on your laptop. Do not compare Apples with Peers.

2003-05-28 11:31 pm

“If you don’t like using your brain, or actually having to know how your computer works, then you should probably stick with Windows XP.”

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. It reeks of zealotry. There are tons of things you can do on XP that require brains and I shouldn’t need to list them for you.

“Or, if you’re looking for a “My First *NIX Workstation”-type of system, but still want good commercial apps, buy a Macintosh.”

Oh come on, it’s better than just for “My First *NIX workstation” type of sytem” I mean who would want to spend so much money on something like that. It has it’s advantages. It’s a good system.

2003-05-28 11:32 pm

What the linux community has in freedom over windows it more than makes up for in stiffling peer-pressure to toe the line.

2003-05-28 11:36 pm

First off, I’m comparing XP to any distro on my P-II and my unmentioned P-IV. Second, XP wont go on the K-6 (and I’m not even gonna try the Pentium).

Now my real question is, why *can’t* it be faster? There’s just no such thing as faster. Why is that?

2003-05-28 11:38 pm

Is useability the only thing to consider when choosing an OS? Even a desktop OS?

I would say, no. Other factors are just as important. For instance, trust: if you are an individual, or a Chineese government concerned about security, would you really trust Microsoft if you had a choice?

And there is the issue of open Standards. Very important. Having many OS choices will only make sense if they can talk to each other and share files easily, but even for a corporation, MS doesn’t play well at all here,. The samba team, for example, spends more time trying to do detective work than coding. Shouldn’t be that way.

And price. As consumers, we all have a stake in promoting competition. Heck, MS lowered the licensing prices for Munich. If Linux wasn’t around to compete for that deal, do you think they would have make that effort?

2003-05-28 11:39 pm

Because the big “desktop environments” are simply too bloated. After using linux for a while inside Gnome & KDE, I got extremely frustrated. I moved to sawfish + gnome-panel (just the panel, not the rest of gnome) and was delighted. I have in the past few months just switched completely over to IceWM. It’s faster than sawfish+gnome-panel, looks great, supports themes (easy to find one I like), and has all the features I liked in Win98 + more. It loads virtually instantly (from ‘startx’ at the console to the desktop is about a second).

Of course, you can run all the K* apps and anything from gnome inside it (all x apps). So, if you’re disappointed with the speed of kde/gnome, try something different! In my case (with debian) – it was a matter of apt-get install icewm and then simply changing the .xinitrc to call it when startx is run.

2003-05-28 11:40 pm

> You are loading kde3 and compare it with win98.

Well, I may say that XP is as fast as 98 to boot (or at least very close). I don’t know what they’ve done, but the booting time is incredibly better between 2K and XP, at a point that XP is the first NT kernel based OS that boot time is in the range of a 9X.

> Have you ever tried running XP on your 90mhz laptop

> or 350mhz workstation?

I don’t care. I only care to know which OS is more responsive on my PC. XP is slow on a 90mhz ? So ?

2003-05-28 11:41 pm

Also, try xfce and the beta xfce 4, great, fast, usable environments.

2003-05-28 11:42 pm

What a simpleton “article”. Linux with all the latest apps runs perfectly well on my 600Mhz laptop. XP choked to a slow crawl none stop on that same laptop and was appropriately removed.

This “article” basically can be summed as: “you’ll have to learn a buncha new stuff if you use Linux; if you don’t like learning new stuff, you won’t like Linux”.

Most people that make the switch to Linux do so because they’re tired of MS bull and want something new.

2003-05-28 11:43 pm

> I only care to know which OS is more responsive on my PC. XP is slow on a 90mhz ? So ?

People probably will take this statement the wrong way again, but it is true: BeOS is the most responsive OS at 90 Mhz on a GUI. Win95 is not bad either. Win98 is so-so. KDE 1 and Gnome 1.4 on an older Linux is not bad either.

But neither of the new Linuxes or Microsoft OSes are fast on 90 Mhz. Your best bet might indeed be BeOS if you don’t like Windows or old Linux.

2003-05-28 11:47 pm

Eugenia: Thanks for the precision, that’s what I meant. I care about which OS is better on my current PC. And someone telling me that I’m wrong because the same OS on a 90mhz isn’t good at all, then … I just don’t care … 😉

2003-05-28 11:47 pm

This article is just stating the obvious without much substance. Those points are common knowledge since years (some aren’t even that accurate anymore) and often repeated at webforums, etc. Not really newsworthy IMHO.

Just like the “why use Linux” or “why choose Mandrake” articles on the same site. Though “Red Hat may be free but you have to pay for updates” is news for me…

I know this is destructive criticism but I don’t think it’s fair to label everyone a fanatic troll who doesn’t think this is a good article. Of course I wouldn’t quite use the term “bunch of horseshit”…

Now don’t get me wrong, but recently I sometimes have the feeling that the thought weither something is “fair” or “unbiased” dominates the thought weither something is actually quality. Despite the fact that absolutely nobody is really unbiased who spends a lot of time with operating systems.

2003-05-29 12:03 am

Changed the subject a little, so hopefully people will get my name right

I use IceWM regularly, and have even made a few themes (albeit crappy ones). Blackbox is another cool one, though I haven’t played with it near as much.

Back to being somewhat flameable- I’m a penguinista, to an extent, but even I have to admit that Explorer, for what little it’s worth, does load instantly, even on my P-II. I mean, instantly. Slight flicker, then it’s up and running. Konqueror? 7 seconds. 1.5 to open a new window, if Konq. is already open. Why is that? If such a speed gain could be made in KDE, why isn’t it done? Not complaining, just asking!

For speed – disable all your extra services. Apache, samba etc. etc. Yes, we all fantasize about running a web server. But most of us suck at web design (to be honest), so you’ll be doing the world a favor.

Hardware compatability – my soundcard and network card don’t work under windows (i have spent hours trying to get them to work), but they work perfectly under linux.

2003-05-29 12:18 am

I’ve always wanted to know why Linux on the desktop doesn’t try to compete for the speed crown.

There are some reasons for this.

One would be that a typical Linux desktop is extremely modular, with lots of pieces working together. This is more difficult to optimize then a monolithic system like Windows. Another reason is, that speed is very subjective and always depends on what the software actually can do. For example Windows XP would always loose against Windows 98 in terms of speed, so should Microsoft make it a priority to beat 98? That would hardly be possible without turning XP into a pile of junk.

So beeing “the fastest” is a moot point. Try IceWM and it will fly, but besides of beeing fast, it will pretty much suck.

The result of this is, that developers usually go for feature completeness first (having performance in mind of course) and then optimizing it. A good example for this is Mozilla. Anyone remember how this started as a bloated and dogslow codemonster? Now that Mozilla is pretty much feature complete for a modern rendering engine, more ressources are spend into optimizing and today it is as speedy and relatively lightweight as barely everyone would have imagined when it was at Milestone 14.

The same is happening with other software, see Nautilus for example. It is just now getting to a point where it is usable speedwise and it will certainly improve instead of getting slower from now on.

I can assure you that developers ARE trying to improve the performance constantly and it really has to get MUCH better than it is right now to compete, but trying to become actually faster than Windows would be a lost cause. Not just because Windows is actually pretty fast, but also because it’s impossible to really weight features against speed.

Metacity for example is quite slow compared to KWin or XFWM, but then again Metacity has the most flexible theme engine, allowing almost very theme to scale with different fontsizes (this is very important for me because otherwise most titlebars are too small on my 1600×1200 desktop). Despite that, it just looks neat.

Now does Metacity suck because it’s slow or does XFWM suck because it doesn’t support this features?

The only true answer is, that you have to see what works well enough for you. Both with features and with speed.

Personally, I’m not happy with the current performance of RH9, but it works so well for me that I don’t mind it too much.

2003-05-29 12:23 am

I want my system not to crash every 20 mins.

I want my system to be secure.

I dont want to reinstall WIndows 98 every 2 weeks.

I dont want to maintain funky registry.

I dont want to patche everyday and then roll back from redmond.

I dont want to be scared to open attachment.

I dont want to pay $300 for M$Office just to use spreadsheets and write propietory documents.

I dont want people stealing SSL from my browser.

I dont want propietory Browser.

I dont want to use .Net with security holes.

I choose linux with mozilla 1.3.1, Openoffice and Java as my language platform

dont know when last this gentlman tried a newer distro or haunted freshmeat or sourceforge but its hard to find any apps there are not comparable linux software for

nother point on this line

a. win4lin

b. bochs

c. wine

d. crossover and other adaptive wine technologies

2. your games wont run

true but refer to point one there are thousands of games for linux that arent retail but FREE also there are quite a few commercial linux games and if that isnt enough (geeze you must really want alot of games) the theres transgameing technology allowing you to run a ton of windows games nativly or you can use an emulator

3. cant be up and running quickly

very very wrong try knoppix one it might actually boot faster than your hd system and its automaticcalyy ready except for a extremly fast network setup program

or try lindow or xandros etc……

this guy apparently knows quite a bit about linux but unfortuanatly i see reviews of operating systems like linux windows or mac by people that dont look beyond the surface or prior experiences

unless your looking for commercial use linux is ready for the home

think about it i can take my linux with me anywhere

1. on any cdrom computer (knoppix morphix demo linux etc….)

i can run it on any mac (yellow dog etc….)

i can run it on any hardware spark as400 etc….

i can even run it on my pda or palm

and last but not least ican run it on my

playstation

playstation 2

xbox

etc…

lets see any other ops sys claim all that…

but as i warn my newbie friends with great power comes great responsibility (and even greater headaches)

for instance one of my friens was dragging a bunch of icons on his desktop and acidently realeased them over another icon

windows nothing happens

linux

it tried to pipe the programs….

again great power great headache

its powerful its user friendly

and most importent if your not careful ( well even if you are careful) it can bite you in the but in the blink of an eye

ask any one who has had thier devnul file damaged you can look for years before you figure out that innocent little bit happened etc…..

also if your really home sick for windows there are a ton of themes and window managers for linux that emulate the look and feel of windows

try xpde (wish someone would develop some rpms and deb files for it if i get some time this week i thought about doing that)

2003-05-29 1:30 am

It may be stating the obvious, but one might not get that impression from the Linux sites or books. For example, the introduction of one of the O’Reilly books on Red Hat has a somewhat similar list, but the slant is sort of “you shouldn’t use Linux if you’re set in your ways and don’t want to learn anything new”. This article is much less biased. And he didn’t even mention the issues of document compatibility and IT support in the typical Windows-only office environment.

To a large extent, it’s a chicken and egg situation – Linux on the desktop won’t get the same attention and care from OEM, peripherals, and commercial application software vendors until it achieves a few percent share. But another issue may be that some market incentives are lacking, because of the GPL and the ethic of free software. For example, it may make more business sense for Red Hat to deploy its limited resources in developing a fancy new GUI shell rather than fix lots of nagging usability problems, which would then be immediately picked up by its competitors.

2003-05-29 1:57 am

perhaps the major difference is that when you don’t have to pay for Windows XP, like you don’t have to pay Mandrake, things are not compared at a fair ground.

Indeed, I’m wondering how many users will switch to GNU Linux when you have to pay so much every 2 year or so to upgrade your OS.

However, in a country I come from, not many people uses original software, so Linux seems to be reserved for the uber-geeks and ultra-showy guys.

2003-05-29 2:05 am

the Osnews folks should really consider keeping the commenting system as it is. The past few weeks has seen a sharp increase in the lame ass trouble makers only wanting to piss in the punch. I for one would really like a registered forum style instead of this free for all. It is getting way out of hand. Pity.

2003-05-29 2:08 am

These trolls…. my eyes are bleeding!

2003-05-29 2:26 am

RedHat 9.0 was not out 5 years ago when win98 was out. Why not try a real comparison? Or is fair too much to ask?

2003-05-29 2:35 am

I believe that someone (in an article comparing WinXP and OS X, IIRC) pointed out that the reason WinXP appears to startup faster is that it allow you to log in before it has finished all the background start up tasks, while the Unices, OS X included, finished the startup routines before bringing up a login prompt.

2003-05-29 2:43 am

As a rule of thumb, if the computer you are planning to use with Linux isn’t powerful enough to run Windows XP, it will not be powerful enough to run the latest distribution in a satisfactory manner.

It’s been a while since I had a machine with a Cyrix MII 300 chip and 96 MB RAM, but I remember running KDE 1.x, KDE 2.x, and GNOME 1.x on it. Enlightenment ran fine on it, too. It is probably fair to say that Linux is a bit more forgiving in it’s hardware requirements than Windows XP, even with the desktop environment stuff.

2003-05-29 2:44 am

I noticed alot of people mentioning wm speed and games for linux. as far as a wm goes i suggest fluxbox; it loads up in under a second on my computer. and as far as games i suggest quake3 (with the urban terror mod) and UT2003; both run on linux NATIVELY.. if you need help installing either then check out http://tuxgamer.com/. I know q3 is out-of-date but do not even try to say that UT2003 is out of date.

2003-05-29 3:34 am

“I know q3 is out-of-date but do not even try to say that UT2003 is out of date.”

The whole concept of UT2003 is totally out of date. Yes, the engine may be recent, and top-notch, but the whole game is just yet another re-harsh of the Quake type of games. Enough already. And it seems it’s pretty much the only type of shooter we can get in Linux.

If I need a shooter fix, I like much more plugin in Battlefield 1942 for some more realistic war simulation.

Is Battlefield 1942 available in Linux ? (I know the dedicated server is, but I have no idea about the client).

2003-05-29 4:01 am

Author mentions “latest” distros as needing comparable hardware to WinXP. Would have been more accurate to say Linux with one of the major desktop environments and all the trimmings, i.e., Gnome or KDE. Even then I’m not sure it’s absolutely true. (I started out with *nix several years ago running FreeBSD with a Pentium 166 and 80mb of RAM IIRC, and it was plenty snappy, even with Gnome+Enlightenment.) He also failed to be helpful enough to point out usable alternatives that are easier on resources, like Windowmaker, Icewm, XFCE, Blackbox (and all the little -boxen;), etc. Changing to a lighter-weight GUI is a choice that really doesn’t exist on Windows.

Also haven’t experienced lack of hardware support in general – I have a Radeon 9500 (modded to 9800 with RivaTuner), and it worked fine on Gentoo from the time I bought it a few months ago – except for the Dreaded Printing Problem. (Anyone have a couple of hints about getting a Canon i950 working nicely with FreeBSD and Gentoo?:) Again, specifics about which hardware items you might expect to have trouble with would have been more helpful than generalizations.

2003-05-29 4:05 am

The whole concept of UT2003 is totally out of date.

I wouldn’t say ‘totally out of date’ just yet, but it’s starting to get a little old in the grand scheme of things. However, I can’t wait til it gets totally out of date so the zealots will shut up about it – they get a native port of UT2K3 and suddenly Linux is the ultimate gaming platform/

If somebody uses their computer mainly as a gaming platform (and I know quite a few people who do), Linux will be of little use to them. Why use Linux for this purpose and have to wait for Transgaming to patch WineX to make the latest games work when you can have them in Windows now?

Oh yes, I know … because M$ is evil and Bill Gates is the great satan of the universe, right? Sorry, I forgot about that

Seriously, I am certainly not anti-Linux (as a matter of fact, I have a dedicated Linux box on my home LAN), but Jesus Christ .. some of you people need to get a grip and realize that sometimes, Linux is just not the best solution for a particular use.

2003-05-29 4:11 am

My main complaint against Linux, no matter what distro, is that all of the internet browsers are incomplete. Site after site you log onto requires a different plugin, often needing a series of console commands, which most average users can’t do. Why can’t a linux browser come with plugin’s already installed like IE(KING OF BROWSERS)? If mozilla wanted to make a great browser, it would include every plugin known, when it was released. IE (THE KING OF BROWSERS) DOES. Mozilla developers need an ass kicking.

2003-05-29 5:34 am

“Well, I may say that XP is as fast as 98 to boot (or at least very close). I don’t know what they’ve done, but the booting time is incredibly better between 2K and XP, at a point that XP is the first NT kernel based OS that boot time is in the range of a 9X. ”

What were you running 98 and XP on? did you put 98 on a 3.06 ghz PIV and XP on a 75 mhz 486?

win98 took forever to load, well over a minute. XP loads in under 30 seconds. It loads faster then beos on my computers, thats fast. and thats on slow hardware to. MS had to make XP boot fast, it was ment for home use, people arn’t going to want to sit and watch it load for a long time. Also no one wanted to see all the grud that 98 went through on boot.

2003-05-29 6:20 am

Alright, for the record, no one has been trying to compare the latest distro loaded with GNOME and KDE to Windows 98. So trolls, as fun as you are to feed, simmer down.

It’s true, though, that Windows 98 is a lot slower, less responsive, more cruftifiable, etc than XP. XP, while only running on newer hardware, beats out 98 most of the time (yes, trolls, on the same machine).

2003-05-29 6:22 am

Well, mostly the article brings out the right reasons why some people should not use linux but…

– you must be functional rapidly – if you are a pro and used to computers then this is not really true, and what about “The small tricks that you have gained in years of use of Windows will probably not work under Linux.” to opposite is also true for Windows, so it’s just a matter of looking at things

– you need to use Windows applications – NOT TRUE, if you think you need them it’s just because I common Windows user moving to linux or a newbie simply does not have any idea about what kind of apps exist for linux – just open your eyes and those who seek will find. The only real exception are games.

– You don’t want to read any documentation – oh, so knowledge about Windows comes to you from the manual hidden under your pillow while you sleep?! And the “click anything” approach also won’t give you that something to what usually can be refered as knowledge.

Peace.

2003-05-29 6:22 am

This article is pretty true especially for the common distros such as Redhat and Mandrake.

Of course you can use an older window/desktop manager but doing so takes more effort and can lose some functionality compared to say XP.

If you want to never use a command line then you can use distros such as Lycoris or Lindows. But then you cannot use the more common software packages you download from Internet sites.

Everything has some benefits and some drawbacks.

As a game player I no longer use windows on my machine but rather do everything through emulation or do without. I believe that quality games outway quantity anyway. Besides Windows games will soon lose out to Xbox and PS2 consoles.

Yes Linux does load up all of the operating system before showing a login prompt. But the users applications and environment do not load in until after login. If say KDE could preload before login it would be better. And linux could really do with the switch user functionality of XP.

2003-05-29 7:46 am

If I install Linux and boot I’m not able to play a game or use a console like the bash. I found out that I have to install the GNU System. After that I was able to start a console.

The Linux itself wasn’t able to receive any command on a console !!!

2003-05-29 8:43 am

drag drop menu comfiuration ?

electronic maps for home use ?

zealots defent linux because it is becoming better, however the other parties in the game are not standing still

xp will boot in less than 30 sec. on 5400 rpm hard drives,

23 sec. on 7200 rpm hdds and as little as 15 secs if tweaked

try that with kde 3.1, gnome 2.2 ??? how about hibernate on a desktop system for around 10 sec. ?

it is true that a linux distro includes apache and other server software packages, but in a home settings, with an uplink speed maxout around 128kb to 384 kb, these don’t matter that much

win98 would crash every 20 secs ??? you are plain STUPID as not being able to figure out why, period.

2003-05-29 8:54 am

“xp will boot in less than 30 sec. on 5400 rpm hard drives,

23 sec. on 7200 rpm hdds and as little as 15 secs if tweaked

try that with kde 3.1, gnome 2.2 ??? how about hibernate on a desktop system for around 10 sec. ? ”

I agree whole-heartedly with that much. Make up all the excuses ya want, it still boils down to the fact that Linux+ all that’s needed to equal Windows for server OR desktop purposes takes longer to boot than XP, by far. Even application launch times are slower. You can make excuses, or you can do something about it.

2003-05-29 9:42 am

Why are you surprised, in fact, there have been a number of articles, both from contributing editiors and off site submissions relating to adopting Linux, using MacOS X as the “alternative OS”, how Linux can do [foo] and [bah].

This is the one aspect I do like about osnews.com, there is a balanced reporting of what is happening in the computer world rather than it being dominated either by Windows + fanboys or Linux + fanboys. If you stick around and lurk for as long as I, you’ll see that there is always something interesting to read.

2003-05-29 9:46 am

I wouldn’t know as I keep my computer on 24/7. There is no real reason to turn of you computer, either hibernate it or simply flick the monitor off and leave the box running. What is so hard with that? btw, anyone notice a memory leak in WIndows 2000 SP2? I just noticed it when using a university computer and couldn’t work out where on earth 130MB suddenly went.

when there are 10 computers at home not for server purpose, the bill will add up ….

2003-05-29 10:15 am

Linux price : $0 (with real support)

Windows price for equivalent system :

$200 windows (this is the home edition not comparable to linux *at all* in my opinion, but hey)

$440 office (again this is a software suite that doesn’t come close to the total functionality available on linux)

$570 photoshop (no paint does NOT compare to the gimp)

$20 for a decent irc client (linux comes with … about 50, some of which are *very* good)

$10 per small game (windows comes with 2, linux with 500)

and keep in mind that even a system you paid $1730 for just the software, doesn’t come close to the functionality linux offers for free.

Btw if you use windows for any kind of somewhat specialized purpose it costs *lots* (and by that I mean tens of thousands of dollars) more.

2003-05-29 10:36 am

To summarize: “don’t use Linux if you are stupid”

2003-05-29 10:44 am

I use Mandrake9.1 with KDE3.1 both at home and work. The only time I ever boot into Windows is to play games at home.

For a new user, I’m not sure that there is any need to use the console at all any more. Specifically, with my setup, what do I *have* to use the console for? Configuration? All GUI. Installing or removing applications? All GUI. Setting up printers or fonts? All GUI.

The hardware requirements is also a bit of a non-issue. In my experience, linux works quite nicely with older hardware. I’m writing this on a Pentium II @ 300MHz. As long as you have a lot of RAM, even KDE is fine.

Linux is not for everyone, and there are (still) problems with it. I just wouldn’t include the console or hardware requirements in those problems.

2003-05-29 10:53 am

Why are so many people care about boot time.

It would be great to have ???????? booted in one

second, but is that something to get so worked up about.

I don’t spend all my time rebooting and rebooting and rebooting my computer. I boot it up, then write a document, surf the net , play a game (nwn) and then shut it down.

Almost all Oses boot under 120 seconds how.

Be patient, be calm, relax <-:

2003-05-29 11:57 am

(yes, probably OT, but still just a quick response)

As a game player I no longer use windows on my machine but rather do everything through emulation or do without. I believe that quality games outway quantity anyway. Besides Windows games will soon lose out to Xbox and PS2 consoles.

People have been saying this for years. However, what is required for it to actually happen is fairly simple: consoles must be able to use the wide variety of input devices available for the PC (yes, the keyboard and mouse/trackball, but also the numerous variations of gamepads, joysticks, etc). They also must be able to render and display higher resolutions, which means that HDTV and other increased-resolution displays must be in more people’s homes. The first item relates to gameplay, and the reason why the PC and consoles tend to have vast differences in what types of games are popular. While Halo and a handful of other games have made FPS more popular on consoles, and have improved gamepad controls for those types of games, it’s still not up to the level that can be acheived with the right mouse + keyboard (according to the needs of the individual; personally, I can’t use a straight keyboard or a mouse, I have to have an ergonomic keyboard and a trackball). PC RPGs are almost completely different from console RPGs, and only recently have PC-style RPGs been able to have any success at all on consoles (and the sales pale in comparison to traditional console RPGs like Final Fantasy). Ever tried playing an RTS game or SimCity on a console?

The second part (displaying higher resolutions) is simply an aesthetic, but as long as a PC game can clearly look better than a console game, simply because of the resolution of the display, there’s little chance that someone that really appreciates the appearance (though appearance isn’t everything by any stretch) would prefer a standard television for gaming. Of course, as we go forward, consoles are taking the right steps, adding full-scene anti-aliasing and support for HDTV resolutions. For now, though, I use my PC for FPS, RTS, and PC RPGs, and my consoles for racing, console RPGs, fighting games, and the occasional platformer. (Of course, on both platforms there are also the occasional game that doesn’t really fit a particular genre quite as well, and there are a few games in a PC-centric genre that were actually designed well for the console).

Of course, I really appreciate the ability to play games on a console that costs about the same amount as what I would normally pay for a video card upgrade (hell, right now I could pick up a PS2 and an XBox for less than I paid for one of my video cards), which is why I have a DreamCast, PS2, and an XBox in my living room, and am simply waiting until the GameBoy Player is packaged with the GameCube (end of June) to buy that system. I just won’t be buying Half-Life, Quake, or Unreal (or Command & Conquer, WarCraft, or StarCraft, though StarCraft Ghost may be an exception in a pure name sense) for any of them.

2003-05-29 12:21 pm

Boot up time is an definitely an area where Windows has surpassed its competitors(although it still doesn’t beat BeOS). Acting like something that is clearly true doesn’t matter or isn’t the case doesn’t help the situation. In the case of Macs, Apple has supposedly been looking into this situation and will have an “answer” with Panther. For linux/freebsd, I realize that I am simplifying things but the problem seems to be related to *nix server roots. In this case that has become a liabilty.

Does anyone know how Windows does it. Are they simply executing the most “important” tasks and completing the others in the background of an open desktop or is there something else that is fundamentally faster in their boot up process.

2003-05-29 12:32 pm

I really don’t get why so many people want/need to play games on their PC. As one poster commented, you can buy a couple of Playstations 2’s(my gaming platform of choice) for the cost of the latest and greatest video card from Ati or Nvidia. So what is the facination with using your PC to play games. I realize that there are probably some instances of games that are only available for PC, but are people that attached to those games that they won’t find an equivalent on a Playstation, Gamecube or Xbox. In addition many of the games that I am aware of including Doom, Unreal, Army something something seem to be cross platform.

I am really curious. I’ve got a half dozen machines running Linux, OS X and Windows. When I want to play games I turn on my Playstation 2. From my fairly limited exposure it seems like the costs, convenience, and experience are better with a console.

So can someone please tell me what the fascination is with playing games on your PC?

2003-05-29 12:34 pm

That is not a good comparison. This is about OS’s not applications. Aside from the OS cost, all of those altrnatives have native Win apps for free. Why add the cost of Office just because I use windows? I can run OOo, Gimp, free version of AIM, Trillian, etc. So the cost of the OS may be valid in this argument,but not the applciations.

And IMHO, Gimp is more comparable to PaintShop Pro rather than Photoshop – and PSP is considerably cheaper (although stillnot free).

2003-05-29 12:44 pm

>This “article” basically can be summed as: “you’ll have >to learn a buncha new stuff if you use Linux; if you >don’t like learning new stuff, you won’t like Linux”.

>Most people that make the switch to Linux do so because >they’re tired of MS bull and want something new.

Thank you, couldn’t have said it better.

2003-05-29 12:51 pm

>>> Boot up time is an definitely an area where Windows has surpassed its competitors(although it still doesn’t beat BeOS). Acting like something that is clearly true doesn’t matter or isn’t the case doesn’t help the situation.

I’m not being blined to windows. I’m just saying booting

speed is not that critical. By this X-mas there will be

chips running at ~4.0 GHz.

We will stil be listening to people getting upset

because there Os took 10 secondes to load.

Be patient, be calm, relax <-:

2003-05-29 1:07 pm

His purported hw specs to run a recent distro of linux seem rather ludicrous to me overall. From his article I guess I shouldn’t have expected recent distros(most) to run as snappily on a PII-500 class machine as they have done…

“Knowledge” transferrability is correct, and it is true that on some distros the end user needs to do some final manual configuration especially if they have oddball hardware or requirements. Linux is even less of a gaming platform than OSX, neither of which have even close to the number of games available(commercial) as windows. etc. etc.

2003-05-29 1:49 pm

The benefits and the shortcomings of console based game systems both derive from the same inherent characteristic, they are closed systems. Because they are closed, the os is the same for all machines of a given type (PS2, Game Cube, X Box etc.). This makes using the system and “installing” new games entirely trivial.

What then are the shortcomings?

– For flight simulator enthusiasts, who want as realistic an experience as possible the standard gamepad wont do. You need input devices that mimic the flight control sticks, rudder pedals and for military aviation buffs, the weapon systems controls.

– Those who like multi-player games may require the ability to attach to a LAN in order to play head to head. Additionally, those games that involve team play may require players to communicate with each other verbally using an earpiece or headset with attached mic on communications channels routed over the LAN.

– Some gamers like to use multiple displays, one to provide a forward field of view, and another to manage maps, weapons selection, overhead/alternate view or simulator gage panels.

– Finally, some people are not content to remain merely players of games but aspire to game design. One of the attractions of DOOM was the availability of level editors and creature editors enabling you to make your own game scenarios AND make those scenarios available to others. Of course, to use a custom game scenario you must be using the PC version of the game, no way to get a custom scenario into a PS2.

remove caps to email me

2003-05-29 2:01 pm

what strikes me most is that it’s about linux at home. (Check the site name.)

So what’s the point to being functional rapidly?

About slow hardware, there is no hardware that you can run any modern OS on that you can’t run linux on. Just don’t go for kde, but icewm.

Hardware incompatibility: good point. So a hint to everybody: make sure your hardware is linux compatible. Even if today you still use Windows 2000 or XP, maybe some day you will want to try linux.

Windows applications: well, you can dualboot, or use wine/crossoveroffice, and in fact, for my most popular windows applications there are linux versions: OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, Opera.

Games: don’t forget there are linux games too.

Latest and greatest are sometimes available, UT2k3 for instance. Points not true.

Not wanting to use the console,… strange point, who knows what they want if they don’t know what it is?

People who’ve used DOS in the old days don’t have a problem with the console..

Don’t want to read documentation? Stay away from computers. Whatever platform, to get most out of it, you’re going to have to read docs.

Burn a cd with no gaps? You have to know how to set it up (DAO, not TAO)

Rip an audio cd? Dvd? etcetc.

Play dvds from different regions?

For all intersting stuff done on a pc (whatever OS), you have to ingest some info, from the doc, the web, forums or whereever.

Hey! Here’s a thought…why not leave the computer ON instead of booting and rebooting every five minutes. Next thing ya know, all you have to do is fire up your monitor and vwala…Instant usability! Honestly this is the absolute worst reason to or not to use an OS I have ever heard…If Linux (Unix, BSD) and Windows (nt, xp) are so stable, then why would you ever need to restart other than a power outage, kernel compile/install, or driver update (windows)? This is absolutely ludicrous.

I personally found Windows XP Professional to be a decent operating system. Ugly, but functional, and the only MS product that did not crash unexpectedly during divx encoding. At first, I was impressed with it’s ability to handle heavy loads (CPU temp fine, memory fine, everything up to date, yes). Here is the downfall of windows XP. I wanted to try it on my laptop, and I wanted FreeBSD back on the desk. So, I switched. Bam! Please call Microsoft to activate this product, 15 minutes later, after exchanging some 64 numbers with a friendly phone rep, it was up and running. When I tried Mandrake on my laptop and moved XP back to the desktop, well, “second verse same as the first.” I like to test new operating systems from time to time, and I am not at all cool with calling Microsoft every time I want to reinstall my product. I am also not in the greatest financial shape, at least not good enough shape to pay for all the software people think is necessary for a Windows system. Hell, I don’t even want to pay the additional $269.99 MS wants if I wanted XP on both my desktop and laptop for a concurrent 5 minute period.

Let me be straight though, I am not a huge fan of most Linux distrobutions. Actually, I am not a fan in the least. Dependency problems, unstable gui-installer imposed X configurations, program compile failures due to distro layout forks and even MS-like rates for GNU software has taken its toll on me. Note: I do not blame the kernel, or the legions of programmers who devote their time to these projects. I blame the “for profit” companies who throw this stuff together thinking of how everthing interacts within and around their package. I have yet to find a distro other than maybe debian that I have any use for…

I have pesonally found the answer to the above problems in FreeBSD. 4.8 is a beautifully packaged system. The ports collection solves every dependancy problem I could ever encounter, it is stable, and everything is placed logically. Maybe this isn’t the greatest gaming system in the world, but at least it works, and it’s within my budget.

God my post sucks…

2003-05-29 2:13 pm

My XP isn’t booting like it used to. When I first installed it, it seemed so much faster than Win2K. But now, after a year of patches, it is filling with cruft and getting slower. In comparison, gentoo is getting faster. At least with gentoo, I don’t get ‘cruft’ building up over time, since I can rebuild rather than patch.

I also get sum speed up because I can customize a kernel. Clearly, this isn’t something a ‘normal user’ wants to spend time doing. Frankly, this isn’t a big deal – but on my box, gentoo is actually booting faster than XP.

2003-05-29 2:17 pm

>My XP isn’t booting like it used to. When I first >installed it, it seemed so much faster than Win2K. But >now, after a year of patches, it is filling with cruft and >getting slower. In comparison, gentoo is getting faster. >At least with gentoo, I don’t get ‘cruft’ building up over >time, since I can rebuild rather than patch.

The stop rebooting…

>Clearly, this isn’t something a ‘normal user’ wants to >spend time doing.

That is crap…rebuilding a kernel is not rocket science. People act as though rebuilding and installing a kernel is some high level geek ritual!?

Turn the comments off. People don’t know what they are talking about. Useless arguing. It’s not even discussion. Its just people making boldface lies that they heard from their ‘brother at ibm’.

Why has this place turned into slashdot? Lets try making some usefull statements or questions. HAVE A DISCUSSION! Not a fucking war. They are just operating systems. Not religions. No one cares what you use. Windows works. Linux works. OSX works. BeOS works. If you’re system doesnt work right then you are doing something wrong. Quite crying you babies and go back to slashdot.

-yes i use win,linux,*bsd,osx,be,qnx,novell,. i do know. they all work just fine.

2003-05-29 3:25 pm

I certainly hope all the companies who compete against the one I work for read this article closely and take it to heart.

And here’s an addition I’d lile to make: linux is a mistake, don’t you think about running it. Please go out and buy more and more licenses of MS products, please. The more the better.

2003-05-29 4:36 pm

>-yes i use win,linux,*bsd,osx,be,qnx,novell,. i do know. they all work just fine.

You mean you don’t use commodore, amiga and CPM!??? Shame on you!!

2003-05-29 4:43 pm

Startup time differences between Windows and Linux are really myths mostly. I use both extensively (with MDK9.1 being my primary OS at home, XP:Pro for games, and XP:TE at work), and the bootup times (from power on to the gui) are about the same.

XP:Pro boots in about 25 seconds, MDK9.1 about 30, and XP:TE about 1:30 (slower system). The trick is that XP does quite a number of tasks after the gui is displayed. MDK9.1 loads everything before hand. Making it seem like XP is faster.

For example, MDK does its new hardware check (which takes a few seconds) before boot, whereas XP does it after boot. It also prestarts all my services. On windows, many start after boot. If XP’s stuff was all moved to before the login, then it would take around the same time as Linux.

All I know is that XP certainly isn’t useable and responsive immediately after boot because it is still loading other services. I’ve got another 5 – 10 seconds to wait for that.

The other issue I have is with application startup times. Eugiena talked about these in her review of Win2K3. What she did not say was that all the programs she tested have PRE-LOADERS. IE, Quicktime, Office, Mozilla, etc. They all are preloaded into memory so they appear to start faster. Linux doesn’t have this, but what it does have is caching. Take off the preloading in Windows, and apps load slow EVERY TIME. In fact, their initial loads take about the same amount of time as thier linux counterparts initial loads (Moz takes about 3 seconds on mine). However, on subsequent loads, Linux loads them much faster. Moz is instant, OOo is instant, etc. Why? Caching. Yet, this is never mentioned by Eug. in her “reviews” (quoted because they are more opinions due to inconsistent review categories).

I hoped this helped clear up the start up times and application start times myths.

2003-05-29 4:44 pm

…when you are away from your computer.

2003-05-29 4:45 pm

According to this article, you can’t use windows programs on linux. What about wine! THat has very good compatiblity. Watch what you say, you make linux sound bad!

2003-05-29 5:22 pm

What about laptops? Don’t boot times matter then? Geez, people, drop the zealous thing . Linux is great, but lets admit the flaws, eh? Even on a fast, new laptop, all you want is something that’ll come up in decent time. If you wanna turn on the computer and load KDE, you’re waiting probably twice as long (at least) as XP. I’m not saying XP’s all wonderful and usable, but I’d be plenty happy if KDE loaded while other stuff was loading, and then hardware detection happened while I was doing stuff. Hey, I’d *prefer* it that way.

Now don’t say I should get a PDA or use Windows if I need that extra-fast boot time, and don’t roll your eyes at me for suggesting that there’s something wrong there (or that something could be better). Try to just take it as a criticism. Can ya take criticism? For a project you probably don’t even directly work on? I’m not saying Linux is crap, I’m saying it loads a little sluggish, and that’s not “bad,” but I wouldn’t call it good. Open your mind; just cuz it’s not your problem doesn’t mean it’s no one’s.

2003-05-29 5:38 pm

As stated earlier here in the comments section, XP continues to load services following the initial appearance of the GUI. If I were to judge a Linux/Unix start time without ‘startx’ Linux/Unix desk/laptops could claim superiority just by going straight into a command prompt. I have yet to see anyone take this “boot time” thing as an insult to Linux/Unix. We are just basically stating that you are comparing apples to oranges in terms of how you measure a start time. Further, based on the above reasons I think to *accept* the criticism is a mistake, because the criticism is flawed from the original question on…

I have said it before…and I’ll say it again here…Start times are the absolute worst way to judge operating systems. In fact, if you are so hell bent on judging start times with laptops I suggest you read up on OSX. They have a powerless hibernation mode that just smokes winxp in recovery. Maybe that would be a better issue in which to point your sharp criticisms.

=)

2003-05-29 5:45 pm

Why not just take it out of hibernation? 13 seconds on my *LINUX* notebook, and I have 512MB of RAM. There’s no reason to reboot a computer anymore, even when I ran Windows on this thing I rarely had to reboot it unless I played a game. (Borked ATI driver is to blame for that.)

2003-05-29 6:07 pm

I guess that MS Windows is still good as long as you can get away with all of the software piracy. On the other hand, there is no stable long term future on the MS platform. That has to eat away at your leg just a little bit.

2003-05-29 6:35 pm

I’m just saying it’s something that could be better. Is that so sharp?

I’m comparing apples to apples; XP / full desktop to Linux / full desktop. No one’s winning hearts by saying the command prompt only takes 23 seconds to load. I wouldn’t say anything, except people are so quick to point out that linux can save old computers. It’s true, as long as they’re 686, but I doubt anyone’s thinking they’ve gotta do something about most of their 686’s.

No one’s judging an OS by start times. I’m saying it takes longer to get to a productive state on one than on the other. I’m not hellbent on anything except the idea that people aren’t accepting the fact that there’s something that could be better on their darling OS. No, it’s not the whole problem, it’s a very small problem. But it’s one that isn’t even treated as an issue of any kind. Why not just say, “hey, it’s slower at something”? Why do most of us Linux users avert to admitting shortcomings? The closest I’ve heard on this board so far would be along the lines of, “well yeah, but it’s better that way, cuz it’s how we do things, and it makes things better.” I’d rather hear, “yeah, it’s a double edged sword, I’ll admit.”

2003-05-29 7:00 pm

// On the other hand, there is no stable long term future on the MS platform. That has to eat away at your leg just a little bit. //

Say what? 40+ BILLION DOLLARS IN CASH (not to mention other assets) and you say Microsoft has no future?

Read carefully: YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

2003-05-29 7:05 pm

Users don’t want to compile software, or recompile there kernel.

I can understand if you want to add SMB to a none SMB kernel, but to make your mouse work, no you shouldn’t have to recompile.

2003-05-29 7:14 pm

He said no STABLE future. I’m sure they’ve got a future, but what they plan to do is probably going to ping-pong a little bit before they find a new safe-haven, like the OS and Office software markets have been for years, for them.

You’re prolly right — that mean that MS would have to lose about $12 MILLION A WEEK for about 10+ years.

Likely to happen. Heck, their track record shows how much they suck at making money.

Unbelievable.

2003-05-29 7:23 pm

>What she did not say was that all the programs she tested have PRE-LOADERS

I didn’t mention it because I am not stupid neither I believe most people here are stupid. NO, the app loading times I mentioned in my Win2k3 review WERE NOT ON CACHE, it was a clean booting. Happy now?

2003-05-29 7:27 pm

Nooo, no no, not to say they don’t have a FINANCIALLY stable future! just that they’re doing a lot of stuff these days, and the only “unstable” part is where all their real money may be coming from in years to come. Not to doubt that they will be making money, cuz they will. We (and they) just aren’t sure yet which market it’ll be coming from, mainly.

2003-05-29 7:50 pm

Okay, this guy’s a moron. Since the author makes one comparison to XP, I assume he means all of them.

– You must be functionnal rapidly

One XP installation I did took 50 (yes fifty) hours of my time, the machine had been running ME as well as ME can be expected to run. Unless this critria is a reference to usability, well then, try going from knowing how to configure NT quite readily then try XP. You have a steep learning curve ahead of you.

– You need to use Windows applications

Okay so long as they are XP compatible, many apps you might already have won’t run in XP. Oh, by the way some Windows applications do run on Linux.

– You use your computer mainly for games

Got me on that one, Yep, choose Windows, it’s good for something at least.

– You don’t want the use the console

Any XP machine I’ve used required the use of the “console” to get networking working properly on any network that was not a Microsoft network and I’ve had to use it many times just to figure out what XP is trying to do.

– Your hardware isn’t powerful enough

This is idiotic, Red Hat 5.2 runs well on a 90Mhz Pentium with a GUI. Match your hardware and software vintages and you will not have problems.

– You have incompatible hardware

This is idiotic, there is tons of hardware that will never have an XP driver.

– You don’t want to read any documentation

I read an equal amount of documentation to get Corel 1.2 or SuSE 7.3 properly installed and usable as I did XP. If you don’t want to read documentation you should get a Macintosh not Windows.

2003-05-29 9:09 pm

One XP installation I did took 50 (yes fifty) hours of my time, the machine had been running ME as well as ME can be expected to run.

It amazes me that members of the same group who say “Use Windows of you’re too stupid to understand Linux” always complain that they can’t even get a Windows box up and running properly. So, either they’re actually ‘dumber’ than those of us who can do so without a problem, or they’re lying their ass off.

2003-05-29 9:48 pm

If you don’t like using your brain, […]

Please. This is pathetic. It’s the same line of thought of all those movies in the ’80s, where the smart kids did automatically good at school, were videogame wizards and whatnot. Human beings don’t work like “A implies B, which in turn means C”, there are always exceptions, counterexamples or entire populations that contradict whatever theory you may have – and this is an especially weak theory

And now, may I present my counterexamples? I’m an undergraduate CS student, and at home I use Windows exclusively and I feel no need to justify myself – I’m just happy with it. Despite this, I’m still known and recognized as a walking UNIX reference manual, and I always have heaps of Linux users (enthusiastic? yes. Smart? yes, most are. Any good at it? let’s not go there) asking me any sort of technical advice (except configurating stuff – I have zero experience with that), about Windows, about Linux, about UNIX (you learn next to nothing about it, being just a Linux user), the C language, even basic computer stuff

So, what good using Linux did them? do they use their brain? do they know more about computers? See? there’s never a single way to accomplish something, nor a sure way to do it. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that one choice of yours (not necessarily a good one, and not even remotely the most important in your life) is enough to define you

2003-05-29 9:52 pm

My only problem w/this article is the garishly evident grammar and typographical errors… this is definitely NOT a polished article by any stretch… I think that is one reason that it is possibly not os-newsworthy… and I have a question for the guy who says all his windows apps run on linux under either wine, winex, or crossover – or any one who can answer it for that matter.

Does he have any apps that are windows games that use directx (more specifically direct3d)… and do these or would these run under wine/winex? Last I heard/read (forget which) wine struggles greatly with apps that require DirectX/Direct3d… is this accurate?

2003-05-29 9:52 pm

That was a troll, plain and simple. I’ve had XP install/upgrades range anywhere from 1 hour of my time to 36 hours of my time.

When the XP installer has issues it becomes the absolute worst installer for a user. It sits there with no messages, just the stupid animation looping. It is terrible for beginner users and advanced users at the same time. Sure, its great when it works right, but when it doesn’t it becomes a bitch. Much worse then any installer I’ve used previously.

I hope you have install problems with XP someday so that you can learn the pain that the installer can be.

2003-05-29 9:59 pm

I want my system not to crash every 20 mins.

I want my system to be secure. […]

etc. etc. etc. It’s called Windows *98*. It’s five years old, not being updated for a long time, and had to run fully featured on pre-Pentium machines with 16 MB of RAM. And I underline: fully featured. Meaning that it had to leave out features that didn’t matter much to its target users. I didn’t mind reinstalling it once in a while, because I sort of liked it. Didn’t you? well, too bad for you

I dont want to pay $300 for M$Office just to use spreadsheets and write propietory documents.

do you have to? nope

I dont want propietory Browser.

then don’t

I dont want to use .Net with security holes.

it has none

2003-05-29 10:36 pm

There are some reasons for this.

it would be good for you to at least get some right

One would be that a typical Linux desktop is extremely modular, with lots of pieces working together. This is more difficult to optimize then a monolithic system like Windows

Bullshit. You are making this up. KDE and Gnome are slow because they load gazillions of DLLs, and because of the shitty obsolete way Linux loads DLLs (being corrected, or so I’m told). They need to realize that traditional UNIX didn’t have DLLs at all, so the “good, old, flexible UNIX way” (user-mode loader that calls mmap() hundreds of times) is far from the best

Mapping and unmapping a DLL on Windows, on the other hand, require just one system call each (and this doesn’t add “bloat” to the kernel, because it already has to contain an executable loader to at least relocate the kernel image at boot)

Another important optimization is the fact that Windows executables are compiled with a specific base address in mind (i.e. the jumps, calls, data offsets, etc. are valid for that address), and only need to be relocated (with the huge overhead it adds) when that address is already taken. Failure to exploit this feature results in geological startup times (example: OpenOffice.org, whose 100 or so DLLs all have the same damn – default – base address, slowing down to a crawl its already not brilliant startup time)

Add to this the pre-loading of well-known DLLs (e.g. loading “kernel32.dll” without a full path – like it’s done at load time – doesn’t involve the filesystem at all, with a huge performance gain), the consistent copy-on-write semantics (for executable *and* data segments) and miscellaneous other tricks accumulated over time, and you’ll see why executing programs is so much faster on Windows

For example Windows XP would always loose against Windows 98 in terms of speed,

are you sure? yeah, Windows 98 pretty much allows CPU- and memory-intensive applications to take over the system, but I bet the I/O is a lot faster on Windows XP – it’s the kind of things you can only improve by improving it, rather than just stripping it down, and all development of Windows 98 has stopped

2003-05-29 10:44 pm

That was a troll, plain and simple.

I don’t think so – I’m still trying to find out what hardware all these people are using where it takes an act of God to get Windows on it but it works with Linux every time.

I’ve had XP install/upgrades range anywhere from 1 hour of my time to 36 hours of my time.

Why the hell would you spend 36 hours on an XP install? I’m not saying that XP is immune to a 36 hour install process if things don’t go right, but I’m thinking if it takes me over 2 hours, I’m looking at the hardware to see if a) It’s damaged or b) It’s incompatible with Windows XP. If either a or b is true, I’d replace the hard drive before I spent 30+ hours on one OS install.

It’s funny that if someone like this went wrong with a Linux install, Linux enthusiasts would blame the hardware. If it happens on a Windows install, then it’s all Bill’s fault.

When the XP installer has issues it becomes the absolute worst installer for a user. It sits there with no messages, just the stupid animation looping.

Agreed, but is it really anymore useful to Joe Sixpack than a kernel panic where no ‘init’ was found?

2003-05-29 10:47 pm

In my last post, I said ..

If either a or b is true, I’d replace the hard drive before I spent 30+ hours on one OS install.

But I meant …

If either a or b is true, I’d replace the hardware (as in the CPU, video card, or whatever) before I spent 30+ hours on one OS install.

2003-05-29 10:51 pm

My XP isn’t booting like it used to. When I first installed it, it seemed so much faster than Win2K. But now, after a year of patches, it is filling with cruft and getting slower.

patches merely replace defective files, they add none. Blame it on the heaps of shitty software you probably insist on installing, even if you know they suck

2003-05-29 10:54 pm

I have worked as a technical support agent and I think people should read books about both computing in general and their OS of choice. Even people (especially newbies) who are using Windows.

However, there are some applications not available on non-Windows OSes, so sometimes Windows is a “good” choice for particular apps. Anyway, I’m happy with both (RH and SKW) Linux and FreeBSD; they’ve got all I need and don’t include unuseful extras such as bugs.

Peace,

n0dez

2003-05-30 12:04 am

Agreed, but is it really anymore useful to Joe Sixpack than a kernel panic where no ‘init’ was found?

Apropos, a long time ago I tried to install Debian. It wasn’t hard at all – except I had to try a dozen times, because installing it with 11 floppies never worked (floppies break with ease), and installing it with three floppies and a big tarball wasn’t that better – except I never got a bootable system, and I still wonder why

The installer was easy and very straightforward, except it couldn’t install Lilo and couldn’t tell me why – I gave up and had to boot from DOS with Loadlin. At the first boot everything seems to be OK, until the kernel tries to load init. Boom. Linux begins spitting this message like a machine gun:

kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k binfmt -464c , errno = 8

I had a bootable floppy from another distribution, so I tried to delete /sbin/modprobe, to see what would come next. Can you guess it?